South Coast sailboats: three unrelated builders share only a name
A boat labeled "South Coast" could be one of three entirely separate designs from three different countries and eras. The commercial heart of the name is South Coast Seacraft of Shreveport, Louisiana, an Alberg-lineage builder of small cruiser/racers active from 1965 to 1981. Wholly unrelated to it is the South Coast One Design, a British wooden one-design racing class built by a consortium of English yards between 1956 and 1970. A third, later lineage is South Coast Yachts of Unanderra, New South Wales, which designed and began building the Magnum trailer-sailer range in 1987. None of the three shares a designer, a builder, or any ownership link with the others.
Origins and ownership
South Coast Seacraft began production of two Carl Alberg designs, the SC 23 and SC 21, in 1965; Hollis Metcalf was the company's founder and chief designer. Metcalf sold the company in 1975 to three individuals from Chicago, its finances declined quickly under the new owners, and the Shreveport plant closed in June 1981. Over its run, South Coast Seacraft produced more than 4,000 sailboats in total, over 3,000 of which were the SC 22 — by far the line's most successful model.
The British South Coast One Design is a different kind of enterprise altogether: not a single manufacturer but a one-design class, with 106 boats built between 1956 and 1970 by a consortium of English yards. Clare Lallows built the first six; later yards included Camper and Nicholsons, Woodnutts, R&W Clark, Souters, and David Cheverton, while Burnes Shipyard alone built more than half the class. The class's founding members set its brief plainly: a cheap, seaworthy, fast one-design with good cruising accommodation, able to race as a class or in handicap events.
In Australia, South Coast Yachts designed and began building the Magnum trailer-sailer range at Unanderra, NSW in 1987, producing hull numbers 1 through 78 over the following decade. Ownership then changed hands repeatedly: Peter Sands Yachts took over manufacture and built 12 more boats in Queensland before the moulds were purchased by Neville Mills and Amanda Chapman, who formed Magnum Yachts in Victoria and built 9 additional boats; Magnum Yachts later passed to Graeme and Cheryl King, and the Magnum 8.5 moulds were eventually bought by the Magnum Yacht Association in 2009.
The designers
Alberg's SC 21 and SC 23 designs launched the Louisiana yard, and Metcalf and Monroe's in-house redesign of the SC 21 — adding larger accommodations and a swing keel — produced the SC 22, the line's best seller. Monroe went on to design the SC 26 on his own; he believes it served as a model for the Hobie 33, and roughly 80 were built. Metcalf's son Warren, groomed to take over the company, was still designing the SC 25 when he died in a diving accident, leaving the model unfinished.
Across the Atlantic, the SCOD's credited designer is often assumed to be the famous Charles E. Nicholson, but the boat was actually drawn in 1955 by his nephew, Charles Arthur Nicholson — the elder Nicholson had died the year before. Yachting historian Ian Dear has written that Charles Arthur disliked the American tendency toward hulls fine in the bow and broad in the stern.
In Australia, naval architect Bill Bollard designed the Magnum 28 trailer-sailer for South Coast Yachts, which built more than seventy boats to his design.
Construction through the eras
South Coast Seacraft's SC 26A carried an unusual retractable bulb keel that could be drawn up to 22 inches, letting the boat launch and recover easily from a trailer; its sister SC 26 offered wheel steering and a choice of an OMC saildrive or a Baldwin diesel inboard.
The SCOD's construction reflects its wooden-boat era: a 50 percent ballast ratio from a deep iron keel, hulls mostly planked in mahogany over frames of rock elm and/or English oak, and original decks of silver spruce laid tongue-and-groove under a Trakmark top. On boats built by Burnes specifically, the Aerolite glue holding the topside planking splines is prone to failure.
In Australia, the earliest Magnum hulls — those numbered under 10 — were built noticeably lighter for racing, around 1400kg, compared with roughly 2000kg for the boats that followed.
Lines and generations
The SC 22 spawned the Eclipse 6.7 (also marketed as the Northbridge Eclipse), a fiberglass variant with a revised coachroof and cockpit that entered production in 1978 and is now out of production. On the British side, SCODs proved competitive immediately, taking the top six places in the 1956 Round the Island Race, and one SCOD, Hampshire Maid, later appeared on screen, sailed by Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor in Woody Allen's 2007 film Cassandra's Dream. The lineup also includes a South Coast 36 dated to 1990, built with a fibreglass hull and a fin keel.
Who South Coast is for
A buyer drawn to a Shreveport-built Alberg-lineage cruiser/racer is after something wholly different from one chasing a 1950s or '60s British wooden one-design, and different again from a buyer wanting a small Australian trailer-sailer. All three sail under the same name, but matching the boat to its actual lineage matters more than the badge itself.
